If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em

There is still room for more collaboration between the departments to thoroughly integrate art into STEM. Recently, the STEM department, specifically the new skills classes, have made efforts to collaborate with the art department, such as Design and Prototyping and National Art Honor Society working together to create props for Los Altos’s production of “High School Musical.”

“I definitely think that art could be supported more,” Hine said. “I’m hoping that we can help because we’re trying to partner with art and eventually create engineering art classes. These would be skills classes that teach students how to draw technical sketches, read blueprints or maybe use illustrator or computer modeling software to make a visual representation of something.”

At least in the Silicon Valley, reality might just dictate that art take this “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach. The ease with which STEM classes find grants and investments may come as a result of broader cultural trends in the Silicon Valley. As Hine said, “engineering and computer science are very sexy.”